Tapioca

• 1. Introduction

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  Tapioca began as a word before it became a global ingredient. Around 1500, the Portuguese arrived in the Northeast Region of Brazil and heard Tupi speakers say tipi'óka. In Tupi, the word means sediment, or coagulant. It described the curd-like starch that settles out when the cassava root is processed. That single word gave the starch its name. Today the same starch turns up in breakfast flatbreads, chewy drinks, snack chips, and cheese buns on several continents. Yet the plant behind it carries a hidden hazard. How do people turn that root into safe food? Why does nearly every region that grows it have its own dish? And what does making tapioca cost the water around the factory?

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• 2. A Crop for Poor Soil

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  A cutting between 9-30 centimetres long, with at least one node, is enough to start a new cassava plant. Farmers sometimes call these stem cuttings stakes. They can be buried upright 8-15 centimetres deep, laid flat, or tilted. The best choice depends on the weather. In low rainfall, upright cuttings may dry out, while flat cuttings in wetter places may rot. Flat planting 5-10 centimetres below the surface is recommended in dry climates and whenever machines do the planting. Tubers then form close to the surface, which helps them use fertilizer spread on top and makes harvesting easier.

  Growing cassava from seed is possible, but germination usually falls below 50%. For that reason, seedlings are mostly kept for breeding. Cuttings behave differently. They start growing roots within days, and new shoots sprout where old leaves were attached. Early growth is slow, so weeds must be kept down during the first months.

  Cassava is a perennial shrub, native to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil and adapted to the hot conditions of tropical lowlands. It is now also found in West Africa and Southeast Asia. It copes with poor soils better than many other food plants. It grows best in deep, fertile sandy loam that holds moisture, yet it can be cultivated in textures from sandy to clayey. It can still give economic yields on land worn out by repeated cultivation and unsuitable for most other crops. The one real requirement is soil loose enough for the tubers to swell.

  On newly cleared forest land, almost no preparation beyond clearing the vegetation is needed, and fertilizer is generally unnecessary. After other crops, cassava can often be planted right after harvest, though sometimes the soil is plowed two or three times to remove grass and weeds. The crop grows fast and drains nutrients quickly, so continuous planting without replacement lowers fertility. Commercial producers answer with synthetic fertilizers. Smallholder farmers use cattle dung, duck manure, or composted household waste.

  For food, harvest usually comes 8-12 months after planting, because cassava has no clearly defined stage of maturity. In most tropical regions, roots are ready after about eight months, but cooler or drier climates may need 18 months or more. Plants can stay in the ground for more than one season so the roots grow larger. The cost is that older roots turn fibrous and woody, losing both edibility and starch. Harvesting is usually done by hand, by loosening the soil and pulling up the roots, though commercial farms may use machines. Under optimal conditions, fresh root yields reach up to 90 tonnes per hectare. The global average, mostly from smallholder farms, is around 10 tonnes.

  Dried tapioca pearls are 11% water and 89% carbohydrate, with no protein or fat. A 100-gram portion supplies 358 calories and no more than trace amounts of minerals and vitamins. Even so, tapioca is a staple food for millions of people in tropical countries, where it provides carbohydrate and little else. Brazil, Thailand, and Nigeria are the largest cassava producers, and Thailand alone accounts for about 60% of worldwide exports.

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• 3. Squeezing Out the Poison

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  Cassava branches come in red or green, and the root of the green-branched variety needs treatment to remove linamarin. Linamarin is a cyanogenic glycoside that occurs naturally in the plant and can turn into cyanide. The danger is real. Konzo, also called mantakassa, is a paralytic disease linked to several weeks of eating almost nothing but insufficiently processed bitter cassava.

  In the north and northeast of Brazil, traditional community tapioca production is a byproduct of making manioc flour. After treatment to remove toxicity, the manioc is ground to a pulp in a small mill powered by hand or by diesel. The resulting masa is then squeezed dry.

  The squeezing happens in a tipiti, a long woven tube. The wet masa goes inside and the top is secured. A large branch or lever is passed through a loop at the bottom, and pressing it stretches the whole tube vertically. Starch-rich liquid is forced out through the weave and the ends. Microscopic starch grains in that liquid settle to the bottom of the container. The clear liquid above is poured off, leaving a wet sediment that is dried into a fine powder resembling corn starch.

  Casabe is a thin flatbread made without leavening from bitter cassava root. The Arawak and Carib peoples originally made it, because these roots grew commonly in the rain forests where they lived. In eastern Venezuela, many indigenous groups still bake it, including the Ye-Kuana, Kari-Ña, Yanomami, Guarao, and Warao. For them it is the chief bread-like staple.

  To make casabe, the root is ground to a pulp and squeezed to expel a milky, bitter liquid called yare, which carries the poisonous substances away. Traditionally this is done in a sebucan, a pressure strainer 8-12 feet long, woven from palm leaves in a helical pattern. It hangs from a tree branch or ceiling pole, with a closed bottom loop attached to a fixed stick or lever. Pushing the lever down stretches the sebucan, and the helical weave tightens around the pulp, much like a Chinese finger trap. The pulp is then spread into thin round cakes about 2 feet across and toasted on a budare.

  Thin, crisp casabe cakes are often broken apart and eaten like crackers. Like bread, casabe can be eaten alone or beside other dishes. Thicker casabe is usually eaten slightly moistened, and a few drops of liquid are enough to turn a dry piece into soft, smooth bread.

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• 4. From Pulp to Pearls

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  Tapioca pearls range from about 1-8 millimetres across, and 2-3 millimetres is the most common size. Pearls are the most widely available shape. Factories also turn the starch into hot soluble powder, meal, fine or coarse cooked flakes, and rectangular sticks.

  Between flour and pearl sits a product called tapioca grit. Grit is dried cassava flour that has been partly gelatinized, so it looks like flakes or irregular granules. To form pearls, the grit is cut or extruded into small beads of about 3 millimetres, or into larger ones. A form of heat-moisture treatment follows, and it is a different process from the roasting used for starch pearls.

  Raw pearls are opaque, but boiling water turns them translucent. Dry flakes, sticks, and pearls must be soaked well first, and they can absorb up to twice their volume in water. Afterward they become swollen and leathery. Processed tapioca is usually white, though sticks and pearls may be colored, traditionally brown and more recently in pastels. Cooked pearls are soft and chewy, with a prominent elastic texture.

  A factory that buys roots must process them within 24 hours of harvest. Brown-black discoloration inside a freshly broken root shows that microbes have taken hold. Every process water stream contains some sulfur dioxide to keep microbes in check. Uncooked dried pearls keep for at least two years, while freshly cooked pearls last about 10 days in the refrigerator. The gap comes from water activity, since wet product gives microbes a far more favorable home.

  On the Malay Peninsula, cassava tubers weighing 4-13 kilograms are scraped and washed carefully in the hands of Chinese processors. Rollers reduce them to a pulp, which is washed again and shaken up with water. The fecula then separates and passes through a very fine sieve, leaving flour. The flour is washed repeatedly and set on mats to bleach in sun and air. For pearls, it goes into a cradle-shaped frame covered with canvas, where it is slightly moistened and rotated to granulate. It is dried in the sun, then over fire in a greased iron pan, and then it is ready for market.

  Known as boba in East Asia, tapioca pearls are produced by passing moist starch through a sieve under pressure. Their chewy bite contrasts with the sweetness and smooth texture of falooda, kolak, sago soup, taho, fruit slush, and bubble tea. In various Asian countries the pearls are widely used in desserts and drinks, including Taiwanese bubble tea. Small pearls are preferred for puddings, and large pearls for drinks. Pearls for drinks are most often brown from added sugar and traditionally go into black or green tea. Shave ice and hot drinks may use them in other colors, and cakes can include them too.

  In Belgium, tiny white tapioca pearls are added to clear soups, and French desserts such as parfaits use them as well. In the United Kingdom, a savory snack called Skips is made from flavored tapioca.

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• 5. Brazil and the Caribbean

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  In Brazil, a pancake-like flatbread called beiju, or biju, is often simply called tapioca. To make it, moistened tapioca is strained through a sieve into a coarse flour and sprinkled onto a hot griddle or pan. The heat fuses the moist grains into a flatbread resembling a pancake or crepe. Buttered like toast, it is most commonly a breakfast dish. Fillings decide whether it becomes a savory meal or a dessert. They include butter, cheese, ham, bacon, vegetables, various meats, chocolate, ground coconut, condensed milk, chocolate with banana or strawberry slices, Nutella, and cinnamon. It is usually served warm.

  In southern Brazil, a dessert called sagu is made from tapioca pearls cooked with cinnamon and cloves in red wine, though other fruit flavors are used. The cassava root itself has different names across the country. It is mandioca in the North, Central-West, and São Paulo, macaxeira in the Northeast, and aipim in the Southeast and South.

  Polvilho, the fine-grained tapioca starch, comes in sweet and sour types. Sour polvilho goes into pão de queijo, a cheese bread made with a hard cheese, usually matured Minas cheese, plus eggs and butter. It bakes into an aromatic, chewy, often crusty bread that is ubiquitous across the country. Parmesan can stand in for the Minas cheese. Sweet polvilho is used in cookies and cakes.

  In Colombia and Venezuela, arepas may be made with tapioca flour instead of cornmeal. Tapioca arepas probably predate the cornmeal kind, and among traditional Caribbean cultures their name is casabe. Across Spanish and Portuguese South America, the starch also makes regional versions of the baked cheese bun, known locally as pandebono, pan de yuca, chipá, or cuñapé, among other names. The whole, unprocessed root has several culinary uses throughout South America as well.

  In the United States, tapioca is frequently associated with pudding, a dessert, but it has other uses. People on gluten-free diets can eat bread made with tapioca flour, though some tapioca flour has wheat added. Tapioca syrup is sometimes added as a sweetener to foods and drinks in place of sucrose or corn syrup.

  In the West Indies, tapioca is a staple from which dishes such as pepper pot are made, along with alcohol. It may also be used to clean the teeth, cooked with meats or fish, or made into desserts such as cassava pone. In rural Cuba, early in Spanish rule, its popularity grew because the crop was easy to cultivate and easy to transport to nearby Spanish settlements. That ease eventually influenced the way land and people were divided in the early imperial era.

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• 6. Kerala and South Asia

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  Between 1880 and 1885, the Maharaja of Travancore, Vishakham Thirunal Rama Varma, introduced cassava as a rice substitute. A great famine had just hit his kingdom. Tapioca is now widely eaten across Kerala as a breakfast dish or staple food. In Indian English, cassava itself is called tapioca, and in Malayalam it is kappa or maracheeni.

  Chendan kappa starts with tapioca that is skinned and cut into large pieces 6-8 centimetres long, or into small cubes about 2 centimetres wide. The pieces are boiled in water until cooked and served with a spicy crushed chutney. The chutney is traditionally made from Kanthari chilli, which is bird's eye chilli, with shallots, salt, and coconut oil.

  Kappa puzhukku, also called kappa vevichathu, mashes the boiled tapioca with ground coconut, turmeric, and spices. It is then tempered with mustard seeds, shallots, and curry leaves. The mash is famously paired with meat or fish curry, especially sardines, or with moru, a spiced buttermilk. Another popular combination is mashed tapioca with dried salted sardines cooked directly on charcoal, plus green chili.

  For long storage, tapioca is skinned, parboiled, dried, and sliced into pieces 0.5 centimetres thick. This dried form is called unakka kappa. Thin tapioca wafers, similar to potato chips, are also extremely popular. In Tamil, the roots are called maravalli kizhangu and are used to make chips, while the pearls are called javvarisi. Most delicacies are cooked from pearls because they are easier to handle than the raw root. Tapioca is cultivated in several districts of Tamil Nadu, where it provides steady income to farmers.

  Across the subcontinent, tapioca pearls go by sabudana, sagudana, shabudana, or sabba akki in Kannada. They go into kheer, and in Maharashtra into sabudana khichdi, pakoda, and paratha, commonly eaten during vrat, a fast. Cooks generally soak the pearls overnight, or for 6-8 hours, before cooking. In Assam, sabudana replaces boiled rice, called bhaat, for the sick, elderly, or infirm, as an easy source of digestion and strength. In Bangladesh, sagudana is sometimes used in desserts, and faluda is prepared in summer with curd, ice, and other ingredients.

  In Nagaland and Mizoram, in Northeast India, tapioca is a snack. It is skinned and boiled in salted water, or dried and powdered into flour for a dough that becomes fried or baked biscuits. Locally it is called kuri aloo, meaning wood potato. All groups of society eat the chips as a delicacy. The skin, which people cannot eat, is set aside as food for domesticated pigs.

  In Sri Lanka, tapioca is called mangnokka, and it is generally eaten boiled with lunu miris sambol, a chili onion mixture, or with coconut sambal. A curry cooked in coconut milk with a splash of turmeric is another favorite. Street vendors and street-side shops sell spiced cassava chips. At one time, people boiled tapioca pearls together with their clothes to starch them.

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• 7. West Africa and Southeast Asia

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  In Nigeria, cassava is grated and dry roasted into garri, which people mix with water, sugar, or peanuts and eat with meat or smoked fish. Add hot water and garri becomes eba, served with stew or soup. Among the Yoruba, the Ijebu people make a cold-water version by pounding the mixture with a fist until it turns homogeneous. That version is called feshelu. In Nigeria and Ghana, tapioca is a common meal, usually at breakfast.

  The Egbas of Abeokuta, in Ogun State, peel, dry, and grind cassava into a powder called elubo. It becomes amala paki, eaten with ewedu, a jute leaf stew. In Lagos, cassava is processed into tapioca and cooked in coconut milk and sugar. This dish, called mengau, can be a breakfast meal or a dessert at parties and dinners.

  The Igbos of Eastern Nigeria add palm oil and other seasonings to boiled, grated cassava to make abacha. People of the Niger Delta extract starch from cassava and cook it into a dish eaten with pepper soup. In Ghana, cassava is peeled, boiled until tender, and pounded in a large wooden mortar and pestle until homogeneous. That dish, fufu, is eaten with soup.

  Across Southeast Asia, the cassava root is commonly cut into slices, wedges, or strips and fried, then served like potato chips or french fries. Large blocks may instead be boiled until soft and served as a dessert with grated coconut, either slightly salted or sweetened with palm sugar syrup. In Thailand, this dish is called mansampalang.

  In Malaysia, kerepek pedas are cassava chips coated in sambal, a hot, sweet, and tangy chili and onion paste. Fried anchovies and peanuts are usually added.

  In Indonesia, krupuk, the traditional crackers, make significant use of tapioca starch. The most common is kerupuk kampung, also called kerupuk aci. The starch may be flavored with minced shrimp for krupuk udang, or with fish for krupuk ikan. Cassava sliced thin or thick, sun-dried, and deep fried becomes kripik singkong. A hot, spicy version coated with sugar and chili pepper is called kripik balado or keripik sanjay, a specialty of Bukittinggi city in West Sumatra. Cilok is a tapioca dumpling snack.

  Tapai is made by fermenting large blocks with a yeast-like bacteria culture, producing a sweet and slightly alcoholic dessert. Further fermentation releases more liquid and more alcohol, and the result is tuak, a sour alcoholic beverage.

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• 8. Industry and Its Cost

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  Tapioca powder is commonly used to thicken soups and other liquid foods, and tapioca flakes thicken the filling of pies made with fruit that is high in water. It also serves as a binder in pharmaceutical tablets and natural paints. The flour goes into tender breads, cakes, biscuits, and cookies.

  A typical recipe for tapioca jelly begins with two tablespoonfuls of tapioca, washed and covered with a pint of water for three hours. The mixture simmers over low heat until quite clear, and a little boiling water can be added if it is too thick. It can be sweetened with white sugar, flavored with coconut milk or a little wine, and eaten alone or with cream.

  Biodegradable bags can be made from a resin of the tapioca root, as a viable plastic substitute. The product is renewable, reusable, and recyclable. Other tapioca resin products include gloves, capes, and aprons. Tapioca starch is also sold for starching shirts and garments before ironing, in bottles of natural gum starch to dissolve in water or in spray cans.

  One tapioca factory reports using around 60 cubic metres of water to make one ton of starch, and that figure covers only the first step of processing. Disposing of the wastewater is therefore a priority. Cassava contains cyanide, with levels that vary depending on whether the tapioca is meant for human food or industrial use, so the wastewater carries cyanide too. If it leaks into water that holds aquatic life, its low pH harms fish and possibly other animals nearby. Water pollution from tapioca manufacturing has been a problem in many countries in Southeast Asia.

  A typical Indonesian tapioca factory in 2011 produced wastewater with three times the allowed amount of cyanide. The bigger problems, measured against regulatory limits, were total suspended solids, biochemical oxygen demand, and chemical oxygen demand. Proposed treatments include anaerobic digestion, which produces methane-rich biogas, use as fertilizer, and possible reuse of the starch. An aerobic treatment system ran successfully in Thailand in 2004. By 2023, the technology to recycle the suspended starch granules in the wastewater had matured under the name liquid sugar, and it is expected to create more value than biogas.

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